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Anyone felt $170m for the Russian spacecraft is super inexpensive relative to what NASA spends on theirs?

eg. $850mil for this Mars Exploration Rover http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mars_Exploration_Rover

$170mil sounds pretty expensive for something that doesn't work. And it was predicted not to work even before it launched, since they didn't spend enough money to build it properly.

One must account for the relative sophistication packed into the Mars Exploration Rover too. Moreover, there cannot be a fair comparison between a probe and a long term rover.

Hundreds of engineers had worked on it. A community's confidence was shattered with this failure. Trying to measure the extent of this failure in terms of money does not do it justice.

Such a failure is a loss to the entire world. Science has no boundaries.

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